Super NES Classic Pre-Order Round Up

Chaos is a good word to describe August 22nd and the SNES Classic pre-order debacle in the US.

This is how events unfolded:-

Best Buy - Just after 1am ET Best Buy were the first to offer preorders for the Super NES. This sold out in around half an hour.

Amazon - 4.45am ET Amazon went live with a completely new listing titled "Nintendo Digital Downloads/Game Trust Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition". This completely threw many buyers and stock checking websites. Confusion continued with many unsure as to whether this was actually the SNES console as there was no accompanying image. It was however legitimate and again sold out within half an hour. The listing has now been removed leaving just the original.

At 1pm ET it all kicked off again. This time Walmart and Target simultaneously put their listings live. Walmart lasted barely a couple of minutes (probably due to BOT buying), Target fared better and seemingly added stock intermittently for an hour or so.

GameStop had a completely different bad experience. Around the same time as Walmart and Target had released their pre-orders, rumours started to spread on social media that GameStop had also gone live. Unfortunately, the website ground to a halt which forced GameStop to redirect users to a holding page. This continued for a few hours. In the meantime, GameStop announced via Twitter that pre-orders were being taken in physical stores throughout the US. Then, eager eyed regulars spotted you could order on the official GameStop app a number of bundles which had been made available, needless to say they didn't last long! GameStops partner company, ThinkGeek, then proudly displayed a number of not very appealing bundles (to most of us anyway) on their website which lasted nearly an hour in most cases.

Toys R Us announced (maybe wisely) that they would not be offering any preorders, just in store on release day (we recommend you take a helmet!)

All in all countless eager buyers were left frustrated and angry at the lack of stock provided despite Nintendo promising considerably more stock than the NES Classic last year. It remains to be seen if any more SNES Classic preorders become available again before launch, however it's clear is that demand is sky high and these consoles are highly likely to be in short supply until the end of the year.